Epic announces new 'Unreal Tournament,' to be free, moddable

Epic Games announced on Thursday that Unreal Tournament would be making a return and the newest game will feature plenty of input from players, oh and it would be absolutely free.

The new game, to simply be called Unreal Tournament, will be built upon the new Unreal Engine 4 and be completely free once it's finished, and no not free to play, but actually free, according to a blog post. Work on the game officially began on Thursday and when it's finished it'll be available on Windows, Linux and Mac.

Epic wants the game to feature plenty of player input, and is definitely encouraging it, even before the game reaches a playable form and updates will be provided through Twitch streams and forums. Then, once the game is finished, a marketplace will be created for modders and others to upload, and even sell, mods and other created content.

Revenue from the marketplace will be split between content creators and Epic, so the company can attempt to recoup development costs.

Steve Polge, senior programmer and project lead, spoke with Polygon and said, "For years, we've wanted to reboot Unreal Tournament, but we knew we had to do it in concert with developers and the mod community." He added, "Given the recent launch of UE4, we think this is the right time to move forward."

Polge said that they expect it to take a few months before "there's a downloadable, playable alpha version available for gamers."